Pirate: A Thriller Read online

  “Greetings from Gangland, U.S.A., kid,” the big bald man said, grabbing Luca’s hand and pumping it. Luca whipped his hand away, rubbing it on his trousers, and stared into the man’s eyes until the American gangster averted them.

  “What did you say?” Luca said coldly.

  “Name is Benny,” the man said, and shrank back from Luca’s gaze. “Benny Sangster.”

  Chapter Six

  Cannes

  HAWKE SLID HIS GREEN AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD UNDER the hotel cashier’s grate and waited for the clerk to raise the dreaded issue of whether one had raided the bloody honor bar. It was a universal travel wrinkle he loathed. He found it unbearable, in the process of checking out of a hotel, that one must stand there trying to recall if one had eaten any peanuts or opened a bloody Perrier before turning in.

  Having paid, he strode across the lobby and informed the concierge that he was leaving, discreetly slipping the mustachioed man a sealed hotel envelope containing one hundred Euros, informing him that the lady, his—guest—might be staying in his rooms until next morning.

  “Mais oui, monsieur. Pas de problème.”

  Hawke emerged under the hotel’s porte-cochere entrance, pausing for a moment. On assignment abroad, one expects to be watched. He saw no quickly averted head, or raised newspaper, however, so he turned right, descending the gently curving drive that led to the avenue. There was little traffic and he sprinted across the four lanes and grassy median to the beach promenade. Following the curve of the harbor west along le Croisette, he kept the Star in view on his left. From this distance, it looked like normal departure preparations were well underway.

  Beyond the twinkling lights of the Vieux Port, the glittering coastline lay like a necklace beneath the dark sky. He was, he thought, ready. It promised to be a simple business, to be sure, but it was not in Hawke’s nature to pursue any objective with less than the maximum of his ability.

  He walked as quickly as possible without attracting undue attention. A pair of rope-soled espadrilles had replaced his evening shoes. Here in the South of France, the thin canvas shoes were conveniently stylish and stealthy. Approaching the palm-lined fringes of the marina, he spoke softly into the lipmike of his wireless Motorola.

  “Hawke,” he said.

  “Quick,” the distinctly American voice of his security head replied in his earpiece. “Good evening, sir.”

  “Hi, Tommy,” Hawke said. “How do we look for this thing?”

  “All the telephoto surveil monitors look good, sir. Normal last-minute activity aboard the subject vessel. Ship’s radio officer has been monitoring the Star’s transmissions and reports business as usual. Idle chit-chat. A pair of cargo cranes loading the midships hold now, as you can probably see from where you are. Looks like heavy equipment. She got her final departure clearance from the port authority an hour ago, confirmed a midnight sailing.”

  “Good.”

  “Skipper, again, I have to urge you to reconsider some backup. I don’t want—”

  “It’s a civilian vessel, Tommy. Not military. The hostage is being smuggled out to China by a single guard. I’m good.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I really gotta say—”

  Hawke cut him off. “I’m allowing myself just twenty minutes. Time. Mark.”

  “Yes, sir. Time: coming up on 23:29.57 GMT…and…mark.”

  “Mark. Twenty-three-thirty GMT. Twenty minutes. Mark.”

  “Sir, I confirm a fast Zodiac standing off the vessel’s portside stern at precisely twenty-three fifty.”

  “Zodiac mission code?”

  “She’s mission-coded Chopstick One. Twin Yamaha HPDI 300s. She’ll get you out of there in a hurry. I say again, sir, I believe there should be at least minimal backup. If you’d only—”

  Hawke cut him off again.

  “Tommy, if I can’t handle a simple snatch aboard an old rust bucket like this I really ought to pack it in. Chopstick One stand by and confirm pickup at eleven-five-oh. Okay? Chop-chop!”

  “Aye-aye, sir. There is one thing—”

  “Make it snappy. I’m about to do this.”

  “If you look back up at your hotel, sir, you’ll see someone standing out on your terrace with binoculars trained on you. One of my guys has a long telephoto on her now. She’s…uh…not wearing much, sir.”

  “That will be all, Sergeant,” Hawke said.

  He snapped his mobile shut and quickened his pace. He had deliberately left the Ikons hanging on the balustrade, left behind like all the few recently acquired and untraceable possessions in his suite. But why the hell would she—He paused and looked back at the Carlton. With the naked eye, he could just make out Jet’s tiny black silhoutte standing at the balcony of his suite. There was a glowing orange dot, her cigarette. He smiled and waved. The glow was immediately extinguished. Interesting behavior. Was she sad that he’d left or curious about where he was going? Make a mental note, old boy.

  Hawke made his way past the long row of charter boats, all moored stern to in the Mediterranean style, and then out along the curvature of an outer breakwater that culminated in a deepwater pier. There was a trickle of passersby, mostly lovers linked arm in arm, out for a stroll now that the weather had changed. Otherwise, the harbor was quiet. The only activity was dead ahead where the Star of Shanghai was moored. Lights atop a pair of very tall cranes created an oasis around the ancient steamer. At her stern, the faded red flag of the People’s Republic of China hung limply in the light breeze.

  All the intel he had from Admiral “Blinker” Godfrey at DNI Gibraltar and his old friend Brick Kelly, the director at Langley, suggested this nocturnal visit of his would be a complete surprise to the Chinese operative on board the Star. He was a man operating under the name of Tsing Ping. He was a Te-Wu secret police officer whose dossier Hawke had read twice just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. The man, whose base was an ancient enclave on the Huangpu River, was apparently a human killing machine.

  CIA had assured Hawke that both the Te-Wu man and the Chinese skipper aboard the old tramp steamer had no idea the Americans were on to them. They knew that the Americans would think Brock had simply missed a pickup in Morocco, that’s all. Happened all the time. Besides, this guy Brock, whoever he was, was a NOC. Normally such agents, captured in the line of duty, were simply dead men, no questions asked, no answers given.

  Unless Hawke got him out tonight, his slow death at the hands of the world’s most sophisticated torturers was a given.

  More important, Brock’s superiors in Washington would never learn what secrets were imprinted upon his brain. Kelly wanted him alive. Badly.

  Hawke stepped over a mooring line running from a hawser on the Star’s stern to a bollard on the deepwater pier and brought the scene before him into focus.

  A couple of seamen were lounging at the stern rail, smoking cigarettes, watching the fog roll into the harbor. Most of the crew was engaged with the loading going on amidships. There was a single lookout standing at the bow. They’d posted a pair of standard-issue guards at the foot of the gangway. Both were wearing greasy orange slickers with rain hoods. One of them was looking at him now, carefully observing his approach. Unlike most such practitioners in his chosen field, this one looked almost alert. Hawke plastered a drunken smile on his face, dropped his right shoulder, and walked loosely toward the man, concealing the narrow blade along the inside of his right forearm.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n,” Hawke said slurrily to the big fellow, laying his left hand easily on his shoulder. “This wouldn’t be the HMS Victory, now would it? Nelson’s barky? Seems I’ve lost me bloody ship.”

  The guard sneered, showing his unfortunate teeth, and reached inside his slicker for a weapon.

  Hawke instantly inserted the long thin blade precisely five millimeters below the man’s sternum and upward into the thoracic cavity on his left side, found the heart, and ruined it. One small gasp and his eyes went vacant.

  Before the first man kn
ew he was dead Hawke had turned and performed an identical procedure on the second, smaller guard. He caught the newly deceased by the collar of his orange waterproof and let him fall silently to the concrete, the dead man’s arms sliding out of the sour-smelling garment as he did so.

  In a trice, Hawke shouldered himself into the slicker and raised the hood so that his face was in shadow. As he did, he stifled the wave of self-disgust that usually accompanied such vicious and unexpected violence. He actually hated killing, though it was duty. He took pride in doing it well. It was scant consolation.

  Tendrils of fog snaked into the harbor from the sea and wrapped around the old steamer’s stacks as Alex Hawke ascended the slippery gangplank. The Star, save the loading activity amidships, was quiet. Having gained the deck, he paused and looked up at the dimly lit bridge. Shadowy figures moved behind the grimy yellow glass of the pilothouse. Two men at least, maybe three. He would start his search for Harry Brock there. He looked at his watch. He was two minutes in, right on schedule.

  To his left, a steep corrugated stairwell leading up, more of a ladder than a staircase. He raced up it, and another like it, and arrived on the starboard-side bridge wing. He paused and listened, feeling the faint shudder and thump of the engines beneath his feet. Inside the pilothouse, he could hear muffled voices and laughter. The door was slightly ajar. He shot out his left leg and slammed it inward, stepping inside the hot and stinking bridge with the Walther extended at the end of his right arm. The look on the faces of the two Chinamen told him his information from Brick was indeed hard fact. They were hiding something. And surprised.

  “Evening, gents,” Hawke said, kicking the steel door closed behind him. “Lovely night for it, what?”

  “Huh?” said a squat man in grimy coveralls who now moved in front of the fellow in a sheepskin coat who was levering noodles from a box to his hungry mouth. The boxlike man advanced toward Hawke, protecting his captain.

  “Bad idea,” Hawke said. Somehow, the gun was now in his left hand and a long blood-stained dagger had appeared in his right. The man kept coming and retreated only when Hawke flicked the blade before his eyes. He had little interest in killing these men, at least until he learned the location and condition of their prisoner. Then he would dispatch them without mercy.

  “I’m looking for a reluctant passenger of yours, Captain,” he said to a leather-jacketed man wearing an ancient captain’s cap cocked rakishly over his bushy black brows. “Chap who was shanghaied in Morocco yesterday. Where might I find him?”

  The Chinese captain stopped eating his noodles, and, placing the container and chopsticks carefully on a stool, stared at him. Hawke saw something in his eyes and instinctively dove for the floor as rounds from the captain’s silenced automatic pistol stitched a pattern in the bulkhead inches above his head. Hawke rolled left and fired the Walther, putting one slug in the captain’s thigh and sending him crashing back against the wheel.

  There was little time to celebrate. Five fingers that felt like steel bolts sank into the ganglia at the back of his neck. He relaxed, then sucked down a lungful of air at a new sensation: the cold press of steel at his temple. The pressure increased and he dropped his own gun.

  “I Tsing Ping,” an oddly musical voice whispered in his ear, “you dead.”

  “This is all a bit more complicated than I was led to believe,” Hawke said, twisting his body carefully and smiling up at the man. His eyes were like a pair of small coals. Tsing Ping racked the slide on his gun.

  “Easy, old fellow,” Hawke said calmly, getting one foot under him. “Easy does it, right? I’m going to get to my feet now and—” He never finished the sentence.

  There was a sudden screech of metal and then a terrific jolt as the ship’s entire superstructure shuddered under the violent impact of something slamming against it, just below the pilothouse. Hawke, trying to scramble to his feet, was slammed hard against the bulkhead. The impact was sufficient to send Tsing Ping and everyone on the bridge flying across the wheelhouse and tumbling to the floor. He heard shouts from the pier below and then shots rang out, bursts of automatic fire.

  Hawke crabbed his way across the chaos of the wheelhouse, managing to recover his Walther from under a sheath of loose documents and navigation charts and broken glass. Then he was up and out onto the bridge wing. Standing at the rail he saw that one of the two dockside cranes, the one directly abeam, was now coming under intense fire from crewmen standing on the starboard rail. Then he saw why. Some madman was at the controls of the crane. The cab had revolved away and now was spinning toward the Star’s hull again, the cable taut, and the crazed operator was about to smash the heavily laden pallet against the ship for the second time.

  Hawke could see by its trajectory that, this time, the violent impact was targeted at the pilothouse itself. With maybe three seconds to spare, Hawke turned and simply dropped through the stairway opening, hitting the deck hard, and raced aft.

  He didn’t look back at the violent sound of metal on metal and shattering glass as the crane whipped around and smashed its pay-load directly into the four angled windows of the Star’s bridge. Agonized screams were heard as bodies were smashed in the twisted metal.

  He reached the stern rail. On shore, he could hear the keening high-low sirens and see flashing blue lights approaching the harbor from every direction. Les flics to the rescue. Everyone aboard the old tub appeared to have run forward to see what was going on. He looked at his watch. The Zodiac rendezvous was in six minutes. In the pitted bulkhead behind him, a rusted door hung open, steps leading down. Brock had to be down there somewhere. Guarded? Absolutely. It seemed he was expected after all.

  How the hell had he imagined this was going to be simple?

  He had one thought as he raced down the steep metal steps.

  He’d gone soft. Lazy. Cocky.

  Chapter Seven

  Paris, 1970

  ALL WAS BLACK INSIDE DES INVALIDES. THE GREAT COMPLEX of buildings housed a veterans’ hospital and the army museum. And, in the center, a great church, the Church of the Dome, where the emperor was buried. The skeleton named Joe Bones had forced Luca’s father to use one of his keys to open a security door at the rear of the Musée de L’Armée.

  They entered the museum at the end of a long dark allée where no lights shone. But now the snow had stopped and a bright white moon had emerged from the clouds. Pale light flowed through the tall windows and Luca could hear the powdery silence outside.

  “Move yer ass, Joey,” Benny said to his gunman. “History awaits us.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Joe Bones said, and shoved the gun in Luca’s father’s back, nudging him forward. The two mute goons brought up the rear.

  Everywhere Luca looked, in shadowy display cases, were relics of the vanished Grande Armée. Uniforms, muskets, cannon, and swords. Cavalry mounted on horses. The stuff of Luca’s dreams. The stuff of La Gloire. In other words, his bright and shining future, if he survived this night. His heart quickened.

  Their footsteps were a hollow echo on the vast marble floors as they made their way past the endless rooms of the museum, moving relentlessly toward the great Dome. Luca willed himself to show no emotion whatsoever. It would do no good in any case to let these monkeys see anything.

  His father was walking ahead of them all, his head down, like a condemned man approaching the gallows. The dog Pozzo trotted happily alongside his owner. Joe Bones held his gun extended at the end of his arm, trained on the back of his father’s head. Luca had never seen the old man look so forlorn and defeated. Except now, amazingly enough, his father had begun to sing. Softly at first, then with a full throat. The French National Hymn, “La Marseillaise.”

  Arise children of the motherland

  The day of glory has arrived…

  To arms, citizens! Form your battalions!

  We march, we march!

  Let their impure blood water our fields.

  It was almost unbearable, the pity Luca felt for his fath
er at that moment. Almost. Finally, they came to a wide corridor at the end of a long hallway. Inside the church proper, now, Luca thought. The huge round room of the Dome was full of moonlight as they entered. There was a waist-high white marble balcony circling the room beneath the towering dome. Pale blue moonlight streamed down from above, falling on a single sculpted monument rising up from the floor below.

  “Holy Jesus,” Joe Bones whispered, awe in his voice. “Lookit that!”

  He took Luca by one shoulder and pulled him toward the balcony. Luca closed his eyes and placed his hands on the cool marble railing. Breathing deeply, he emptied his mind. When he was ready, he opened his hungry eyes and feasted on the vision of his noble ancestor’s final resting place.

  The tomb of his beloved emperor.

  Luca took a deep breath. Napoleon Bonaparte’s real bones were inside this beautiful monument. His heart was pounding against his ribs as he took it all in, almost forgetting about his father for the moment.

  Arising from the lower depths of the church, the emperor’s great stone sarcophagus, the captured wave, rested atop a high marble plinth. Above the tomb, the circular cupola rose some two hundred feet. Although the space was chill and airless, Luca could sense a thrilling presence here. Almost a living presence. Menacing. It was as if Napoleon was not resting here, but lurking.

  Luca saw that a thick rope descended out of the gloom of the top of the dome. It hung directly above the crypt and now one of the goons had a long shepherd’s crook and was reaching out over the balcony, slowly pulling the rope toward his father. He sucked down a lungful of cool damp air. They were going to hang him? His heart rate zoomed even higher and his mouth went dry, but still he showed nothing.

  “Luca!” he heard his father cry now. “Run! Run!”

  “Don’t worry, Father, I’m coming,” Luca said. As he slowly circled the curved balustrade, a passing cloud covered the moon, filling the dome with purple darkness.